Old Time Theatre Organs

Harken back to the
first years of the big screen. Back then, a movie could last a few
seconds or a few minutes and still be considered a movie. All the
movies were silent movies and live musicians were hired to play
songs to accompany the storyline being acted out on the screen.
Fast forward ninety years to today and you would be pressed to find
anyone who can relate to that period in cinema history. Still, for
film buffs and those with a certain affinity for the full,
orchestral sound cinema organs provided, finding theatre organs in Melbourne, of all
places, can be quite the thrill.

The era of silent
films stretched from 1894 - 1929 before the advent of talking
pictures. During that thirty-year period, thousands of theatre
organs were installed in picture shows around the globe. As early
as 1895, silent films that were being shown in Paris, France were
played to a live musical accompanist, often in the form of a piano
player. Larger metropolitan areas typically had an organist or a
small ensemble of musicians whose job it was to play along with the
film.

Theatre organists
were preferred to solo pianists because the organ delivered a much
fuller sound. Back then, films were not professional scored in the
modern sense of the term. No. Instead, theatre organists would
either improvise the score or play pieces from a pre-existing
catalogue of tunes.

The Theatre
Organist

By the height of the
silent film era, theatre organists were largely considered
well-respected artists and composers. Oliver Wallace, who got his
start as a theatre organists, went on to compose for Walt Disney.
Jesse Crawford was so famous as a theatre organist in the United
States that he sold more than a million recordings of his
playing.

Other notable
organists include the UK's Reginald Dixon, Rex Koury (composer of
the theme forGunsmoke)
and perhaps most famous of all was George Wright. These gentlemen
not only played the organ, but many of the wrote original musical
pieces specifically for the theatre organ and had a hand in helping
the instrument to remain a viable part of the cinematic experience
well into the early 1960s, thirty years after audio was added to
film. Even when talkies (a colloquial term for talking pictures)
were running in theatres around the world, theatre organs, across
Europe and in North America provided welcome live music for movie
patrons during intermission.

These days, the
films that reach your local movie theatres are already scored. The
film images are synchronized with the score, the sound effects and
the movie dialogue. So the cinema organ is not featured precisely
in the same way it was during the last century. However, the
stirring, distinctive sound of theatre organs in Melbourne are
still cause for celebration.

But fret not. If
you really want to hear them, theatre organs are still prominently
featured as orchestra pit staples in some of the most beautiful and
famous concert halls. And, of course, in private homes around the
world.